Daughter to the Prince of Death

Chapter 21: Campfire Remembrance

Happy Holidays everyone! 

In the holiday spirit, I decided to update early. For those who celebrate Christmas, Merry Christmas! For everyone else, I hope your holidays were and/or will be great.

A regularly scheduled update will still be on Sunday.

Please enjoy and Happy Holidays!

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The creature, the "Black Night's" heavy thuds were as loud as the hammering of my heart.

We could hear it prowl closer and closer to the inn. Everyone crouching, unmoving, holding their breath as they prayed. It growls outside the door then yowls into the night. I wince, as if feeling the creature's pain. "ah!" I hiss in agony, a headache pulsing through. Jackson's arms, which I didn't notice, tighten around me in response. My breath was uneven.

The creature whimpers. Its heavy steps grow quieter as it treads away. The inn keeper releases a breath, sliding down the door. "Whew."

"What was that?" Jackson's voice was dangerous. I peek up at him, sitting in his lap on the floor.

Inn keeper sighs, standing back up and dusting his hands, "We call it 'e "Black Death" around 'ere. It won' do no harm while ya in doors. I' only kills ya if you wander inta 'e wrong side of 'e fores' on the wrong night."

"But what is it?" Jackson helps me to my feet.

"Fella, we don' know. If we did, we wouldn' call it "Black Death," now would we?"

A trembling inn girl whispers, "All we know is that is has impenetrable skin of the night, pitch black with glowing—"

"—yellow eyes." I finish for her. She nods furiously, "Yah. Anyone who seen any more of it never came back to tell the tale."

A flash of icy cold shoots through my arm and I hiss, clutching it. I gape in bewilderment as on my forearm black scales flicker on and off where I thought I was cut. The itching was gone and replaced with the tingles like the ones in my eye.

"Is everything alright?"

Swiftly, I hide my arm behind my back, innocently smiling, "Yes, of course!"

Jackson raises a single disbelieving eyebrow and reaches for my arm. My eye tingles as he pulls the arm forward. I blink a few more times. My skin was just normal, no scales... no cut... except for a nasty growing bruise. The eye tingles again and I rub it out. I feel Jackson thumb brush over it and yelp as a thousand prickles shoot through my arm. He looks at me in shock. "S-sorry... I don't know what that was."

The others move into the dining room. Jackson removes his eye patch, looking carefully at my arm. He does it again and I wrench my arm out of his grasp with a squeak. "P-please don't." Eyes of our group were on me now. "It's just... sensitive. Probably from the force of the hit." I murmur some bs explaining. I had no idea what's going on.

Tici??

"Don't ask me!! You don't have poison or nothin' in you!"

"She is definitely lying." I hear Toc's, Jackson's other side being, voice.

"You think I didn't notice?"

I gasp in realization as I hear Jackson's voice.

His eyes instantly snap to me, hearing my gasp in his head. My eyes were wide in confusion. "Your eye is back to nor—..." Jackson slips out in shock. He catches himself before he says more, narrowing his eyes.

"When does the thing go away?" asks Jules.

"I' only roams 'e fores' at nigh'. Gone by mornin'. Won' see I' for at leas' a week or so." The inn keeper answers casually, calling from the dining room where the usuals were already drinking and going back to normal, unfazed.